When Mobility is Charged by a Connected Ecosystem

The biggest revolution today is a connected world of mobility– where connectivity isn’t just about my car sharing information with my mobile device, but it is a broader concept encompassing the entire community, state, country and eventually the world. It is what will enable us to share our resources and ensure maximum efficiency while maintaining sustainable mobility practices.

Over the last two decades the pace that technology has picked up has been astounding. We have moved from landlines, to wireless, to smart mobile phone to a time where every person around carries a communication device on them, in less than 10 years. And now, this pace is catching up with the mobility sector too.

For long, OEMs have guided the industry by making incremental improvements in offerings. Don’t get me wrong, the industry is very customer focussed and strives to develop technologies best suited to the markets and customers it serves. But the fact remains, that the improvements in mobility have been skewed unfairly towards how the vehicle performs – faster, safer, smarter, better efficiency, better styling – all the key words that determine the sales of a mode of mobility.

It is certainly a matter of pride, what we have managed to achieve in terms of the vehicles on our roads today; but what is interesting, is that while the focus was on improving vehicles, we may have missed out the central theme of the mobility sector – moving people around in the most convenient manner.

Today, we are refocusing ourselves towards that theme and using technology to ensure that connected and clean mobility is available to all.

The resources we use to propel our mobility – fuels and land space, are strained more than ever before. And this is pushing the mobility industry to expand its horizons, go beyond vehicles and image a world where people & communities are at the centre, and mobility is built around them.

A space which is capable of delivering mobility experiences – not necessarily through world class vehicles alone, but also through the ease and speed of using them.The biggest revolution today is a connected world of mobility– where connectivity isn’t just about my car sharing information with my mobile device, but it is a broader concept encompassing the entire community, state, country and eventually the world.

It is what will enable us to share our resources and ensure maximum efficiency while maintaining sustainable mobility practices.

One of my closest encounters with such an ecosystem being developed, has been in the community of Auroville. Known worldwide for their sustainable practices, the community has now decided to switch completely to electric vehicles within its premises. This will include vehicles owed by the residents as well as a network which will support shared movements for residents and millions of visitors to the community every year.

Today the community is working with IISc for its charging infrastructure network development, Go Green for electric two wheelers, eminent members who are from the community.

It is also working in the space of renewable energy and mobility, the Pondicherry government to advice and plan for the project and Mahindra Electric for electric four wheelers and the platform to connect all these elements of the mobility ecosystem.

The vision is simple: to make mobility clean and convenient while ensuring that the environmental resources are preserved and we leave a minimal carbon footprint.

Imagine booking a ride from Chennai to Auroville on a cloud based platform with the tap of a button on your phone. You start your blissful journey by boarding a shared electric bus. On reaching Auroville, you quickly book an electric self-drive rental from the same platform, and the car is ready for you at the community entrance gate to enjoy the self-drive experience.

A quick visit to a café inside for lunch and your friend arrives just in time in a quiet electric auto. You experience the campus with your friend in your self-drive car. A day spent well at Auroville, and by night you book a slot with the charge station near your guesthouse and put the car on charge.

Come morning, you pick up the car and notice that the charge station is powered by an energy storage device which stores energy from wind or solar panels.The power for your car isn’t just green, but also more cost effective, almost 1/4th the regular cost.

One tap to pay for the charge there. After another peaceful day in the lush green surroundings, you and your friend drop off the rented car at the community entrance, board an electric shared bus and return to Chennai.

With your choices of going all electric in this trip of around 350 kms, you saved approximately 39kg of CO2. To give some perspective, its takes 2 trees a full year to absorb that amount of CO2. I am sure you can now imagine the kind of impact this will have when the number of travellers grow from one to a thousand to millions across the ecosystem!

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